Tag: Drama and Acting in the Middle Ages

Articles

Taking (and Giving) Blows: Patterns of Violence and Spectacle in Le Mystère de Saint Martin (1496)

What I would like to do here is examine the passages of violence and other bits of scenography, moving from the macro to the micro level and back again, over the three- day play. With 260 rubrics (stage directions) embodied in the text, a manuscript nearly contemporaneous with the performance itself, we have a unique opportunity to visualize much of the action on stage.

Articles

The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages. Medievalism in the Study of European Drama and Theatre History

If we are going to acknowledge the afterlife of medieval genres, subject matters, motifs and techniques, three methods of research are preferable: 1. looking for simple continuity, 2. taking into account residual afterlife of medieval items in popular culture including folklore, and 3. recognizing the phenomena of the renewal of medieval genres in later ages.

Articles

The Use of the Rhetorical Exordium in Middle English Drama

In this paper I wish to single out one group of Middle English writings, the mediaeval drama, to examine more closely the interesting ap­plications of the doctrine as exhibited in the “banns” of the miracle plays and of certain moralities, and in the traditional prologues, but es­ pecially in the more “organic” solutions arrived at by the authors of Man­ kind and Everyman.

Articles

Gender and Violence in the Northern French Farce

I will briefly examine here the identity of farce’s violent characters and their victims, as well as the deviant behaviors punished by comically violent means, ending with a brief discussion of the social conditions which, in my opinion, may have caused the farce’s target audience to enjoy watching the aggressive correction of certain types of antisocial behavior in the century following the Hundred Years’ War.